An Olympian Is Remembered for Pouring His Life and Love Into the Running Community

It was almost two years ago that David Torrence followed through on one of his many zany athletic experiments. He had just finished his track season and thought he’d try a Spartan Race in Lake Tahoe, California.

With the speed of a top middle-distance runner and the agility of a man who was compulsive about completing hours of drills and circuits each week, Torrence thought he stood a chance at taking home some prize money. The one variable he left out? His physique.

“I don’t even think he finished,” said Will Leer, a competitor and close friend of Torrence’s, in a phone interview on Wednesday with Runner’s World. “During the swim, he was so cold. He was too skinny to warm himself up—it was just ridiculous. Then he had to do like 1,000 burpees as a penalty for all the obstacles he couldn’t complete. He was just a nut job—just so funny.”

Torrence, 31, who competed for Peru (where he was a dual citizen) in the 5,000 meters at the 2016 Olympics, was found dead on Monday morning in a condominium complex swimming pool in Scottsdale, Arizona. A cause of death has not yet been released by the Maricopa County medical examiner. He had recently returned to the Phoenix area from his hometown of Malibu, California, to train at Altis, a coaching center for elite track and field athletes.

Since Monday, many fans and friends have shared their memories of Torrence, painting a picture of a decorated athlete who was universally liked and respected, who loved track and field deeply, and wanted to spread his passion for the sport as far and wide as he could. A serious competitor on the track, he was also eager to gather friends for beers afterward. He had the ability to turn an individual sport into a team effort.

“I think he’d be the first to tell you that he wasn’t the most talented athlete in the world but he always wanted to learn how he could better,” said Ricky Soos, the middle-distance coach at Altis. “I’ve seen a lot of OCD distance runners and he also had that side to his personality, but he could be so relaxed and chilled out—he didn’t let anything detract from his love of life.”

Tenacious ambassador and competitor

Torrence grew up in Los Angeles and graduated from Loyola High School. He went on to the University of California-Berkeley and competed on the track and field team for the Bears, but learned an early lesson in discipline when he was expelled for not meeting academic standards. He spent multiple semesters at community college improving his grades so he could return to Cal.

Torrence recently opened up to Leer about that difficult time in his life. The two were running in Hyde Park earlier this month after Torrence had a disappointing performance at the London world championships, failing to advance out of the preliminary round of the 1500 meters.

“[Cal] had very plain criteria to gain readmittance to prove that you were serious about being a student,” Leer said. “He told me he had As in like seven out of the eight classes he took but had a B in one. He had to go back and do another semester at community college. So many people would have been, like, f--- it. But not David. He stuck it out. And he came back to be the leader that the team needed.”

It was also then that his shenanigans started. Most notorious was his downhill mile, which began as a way to win a bet with a roommate that he couldn’t break four minutes in the mile before the year was over. By December 2005, he realized he wasn’t fit enough to do it on the track, so at 2 a.m. one morning he tore down Bancroft Way in Berkeley with his friends blasting “Eye of the Tiger” from the car. He clocked a 3:46 and a new tradition was born, as well as a legendary YouTube video and LetsRun thread.

Soos said that Torrence had a few more tricks he had hoped to accomplish, including racing the 800, 1500, and the 5,000 meters at a meet in November in Peru where he would be competing against athletes from other South American nations.

David Torrence runs the 5,000 meters at the 2016 Games, representing Peru.

Image of Sport

“He wanted to win all of them to make Peru proud,” Soos said. “In 2018 he also wanted to be the first man to run a sub-four-minute mile on a grass track, barefoot. It was another one of his harebrained ideas. He asked me this summer if we could train for it. That was David—always thinking of new and exciting things to do. He desperately wanted to bring as much positive attention to the sport as he could.”

But for all the antics, Torrence was serious about his performance. He made the final of the Olympic 5,000 meters in Rio and finished 15th, and he had personal bests of 3:52.01 for the mile, 3:33.23 for the 1500 meters, and 13:16.53 for 5,000 meters.

He was also one of track and field’s most active advocates of clean sport. In 2014 Torrence briefly trained with Jama Aden, a Somalian who coaches some of the fastest runners in the world, including Genzebe Dibaba, the 26-year-old Ethiopian world-record holder in the 1500 meters. Torrence became uncomfortable with what he experienced at a training camp in Spain. He quietly left the coach and went to authorities with his concerns. Eventually, partly because of Torrence’s help, Aden was arrested by police in a doping raid.

“Just this month when he was in doping control at the world championships, an IAAF official he worked with on the Aden case approached David about becoming a clean sport ambassador in South America,” Soos said. “He was excited about that opportunity. His legacy in terms of clean sport is clear to see.”

Torrence’s next race was supposed to be the Long Island Mile, an event he had won twice at a meet created by Kyle Merber, an American competitor in the 1500 meters.

Merber has renamed the event, which takes place on September 6, the “David Torrence Mile.”

“The first year…he decided to come and do me a favor [by racing the event]. He ran 3:53,” Merber said. “He’s jumping around going crazy and signed autographs forever. Then hours after it’s over—this is now 11 p.m.—they’re trying to turn the lights off on the track and across the track he’s doing plyos and pushups.”

An upbeat spirit

Torrence always made time for fans and it’s something Leer said he won’t forget.

“The passion with which he competed and trained was the same passion with which he approached being an ambassador for the sport,” Leer said. “I hope that is something we can all learn—this is a bit of a cult sport and it’s a little bit of a strange sport. And the people who follow it are a little bit strange. But he returned the love to them. He was so good at it. We could all do better.”

Chanelle Price, an 800-meter specialist who was an Altis teammate, called Torrence the glue that held their group together. The two began training at Altis during the fall last year, but it wasn’t until January, when Price was hospitalized with a pulmonary embolism, that she grew closer to him as a friend.

“He surprised me at the hospital—I wasn’t expecting that because I had only known him for two months,” Price said. “He came with magazines and chocolate and his upbeat spirit. He sat with me for hours, keeping me company. That meant a lot to me and our friendship grew from there.”

At practice, usually all the athletes are on the track at the same time—sprinters, jumpers, throwers, hurdlers, and runners. But Torrence usually was the outlier, the one who ran farthest and had the most grueling workouts.

“Everybody cheered when David was on the track,” Price said. “He was on his own because nobody could stick with him. I remember thinking, ‘He’s crazy.’ He’d even come on my workout days to cheer our group on. He’d hop in on the track and start pacing my intervals if he saw me struggling. He was so giving and just truly loved to run.”

Leer said that the only thing Torrence was more competitive at than running was trying to be a good friend.

“Nobody really knows what it is to be the perfect friend, but damn it, David wanted to find out,” Leer said. “If that meant somebody inviting him over for a game night and playing board games for five hours straight, he was in. Also, he just really loved board games.”

Lea Wallace, who was among those closest to Torrence, concurred.

“If there is one thing I learned from David Torrence, he taught me how to love with all my heart,” she said, in a text message.

After that failed attempt at the Spartan Race two years ago, Torrence called up Leer and wife Aisha (Praught) Leer, an Olympic steeplechaser for Jamaica, who were then living in Oregon. With a training break in full swing, he decided to come for a weeklong visit.

The trio piled in the car one day in search of hot springs. Torrence sat in the middle seat in the back so he could talk more easily with the Leers. Suddenly he put a hand on each of their shoulders and leaned forward.

A Part of Hearst Digital Media
Runner's World participates in various affiliate marketing programs, which means we may get paid commissions on editorially chosen products purchased through our links to retailer sites.